The Soviet T-34 tank, the one tank displayed throughout the Russian Victory Day parade on May 9, 2023, drives through Red Square.
Associate | Getty Images | News Getty’s paintings
Russia’s Victory Day military parade not only showed Moscow’s uncertainty about possible Ukrainian attacks, but additionally highlighted the country’s depleted military resources consequently of the conflict, political analysts say.
May 9 is a public holiday in Russia when it commemorates the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany in World War II. It’s arguably an important day in Russia’s public calendar and history, forming a central a part of the country’s modern national identity.
This 12 months’s military parade on Moscow’s Red Square and celebrations across the country have been noticeably smaller than in previous years or canceled altogether, with six regions (including annexed Crimea) and no less than 20 cities halting celebrations.
The military parade in Moscow on Tuesday was more subdued, with no overflights or “Immortal Regiment” processions, which are frequently large-scale public events commemorating those that died in World War II. There have been also far fewer soldiers and military equipment on display than in previous years.
Analysts noted that just one tank from the Stalin era was on display throughout the military parade on Red Square.
“It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate symbol of Russia’s declining military fortune than the sight of a lone Stalinist-era tank rolling around Red Square throughout the traditional May 9 Victory Day celebrations,” said Peter Dickinson, editor-in-chief of UkraineAlert. blog on the Atlantic Council, commented on Tuesday.
“For the past twenty years, Vladimir Putin has used Victory Day to showcase the rebirth of contemporary Russia as a military superpower, with dozens of the most recent tanks featured in every annual parade. Nonetheless, this 12 months the one tank on display was the World War II Model T-34 tank.”
Through the Victory Day parades in previous years, Russia displayed long lines of tanks. Here, a Russian T-90A tank drives through a previous parade on Red Square.
WASIL MAXIMOV/AFP/Getty Images
Dickinson noted that “the inevitably embarrassing lack of tanks at this 12 months’s Victory Day Parade was widely interpreted as further evidence of Russia’s catastrophic losses in Ukraine”, as echoed by the UK Ministry of Defence.
Commenting on Wednesday, the ministry noted that “the make-up of Russia’s annual Victory Day Parade on Red Square has highlighted the materials and strategic communications challenges” facing the Russian military within the 15 months leading up to the war in Ukraine.
“The parade was reportedly attended by greater than 8,000 people, but most were auxiliaries, paramilitary forces and cadets from military training facilities,” the ministry noted in its latest Twitter intelligence release, adding that “the one personnel of the deployable regular forces consisted of contingents of the Railway Forces and the Military Police.
A spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Kremlin concerns
Security concerns were the purported reason for limited Victory Day events in Russia, with an alleged drone attack on the Kremlin last week (which Russia blamed on Ukraine and america, which each denied), acting as a precursor to – and justification for – a lower-profile event.
But military analysts noted that the Kremlin probably also wanted to avoid any opportunity to publicly criticize its invasion, which continues to claim it’s a “special military operation” – the one mention of the war on Tuesday was by the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s claim to crowds in Red Square that “there’s an actual war occurring against our Motherland” despite the incontrovertible fact that Russia has invaded neighboring Ukraine.
Noting the one “historic” T-34 tank on display, the UK Ministry of Defense said that despite heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia could have fielded more armored vehicles, but “the authorities have probably shunned doing so because they need to avoid internal criticism.” about prioritizing parades over combat operations.”
Dickinson of the Atlantic Council also noted that the banning of this 12 months’s Immortal Regiment marches, normally hugely popular when the Russian public has a likelihood to remember their family members lost in World War II, “was an even greater blow” and that the Kremlin was likely concerned that relations Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine could apply for participation.
Participants carry flags and portraits of individuals, including Red Army soldiers, throughout the march of the Immortal Regiment on Victory Day, which commemorates the 77th anniversary of the defeat of the Red Army.
Shamil Zhumatov | Reuters
“With Russian officials still denying the catastrophic consequences of the invasion of Ukraine, the final thing the Kremlin wanted was to rally 1000’s of bereaved relatives and draw attention to the dimensions of the tragedy,” Dickinson noted.
Schadenfreude of Ukraine
Ukraine apparently quickly took notice of the scaled-down Victory Day parade.
The official Twitter account of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense joked that “modern Russian military equipment is far easier to find at Ukrainian military trophy exhibitions than on the Victory Parade in Moscow”, while Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko said on Twitter that all of Ukraine laughed at one Russian tank.
Ukraine continues to distance itself from the Russian sphere of influence and orbit, and on Tuesday President Volodymyr Zelensky complex a bill to the Ukrainian parliament proposing that May 8 be often called the “Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism within the Second World War”, somewhat than May 9 as in Russia and other former Soviet republics.
He said that any longer, May 9 shall be known in Ukraine as “Europe Day”, and Zelensky noted that “we’ll commemorate our historical unity – the unity of all Europeans who destroyed Nazism and defeated Russism” – a word that Ukraine uses to describe “Russian fascism” “.